


Will They Sing of Us

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: A Siege Situation, Canon Divergence, Families of Choice, Fluff, Future Fic, Lightwood Siblings Feels, M/M, Mid-Danger Wedding, Post-Episode: s03e10 Erchomai, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: Magnus would break the world for him. Alec would not thank him for it. At heart, Alec is a builder, not a destroyer. He believes his people worthy of redemption. He believes Magnus worthy of it, even when Magnus himself can't see as clearly.And Magnus loves him. That is where everything begins.Their world is on fire. Magnus proposes, anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lutavero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lutavero/gifts).



> For Vera, who didn't quite put this in my head but definitely convinced me it needed to be written. ♥
> 
> The subtitle of this fic is: "my id, on a plate".
> 
>  **ETA** : Now we live in the post-Shadowhunters finale world where this fic has some uncanny resemblance to canon. :D It was written mostly before 3B, though, so it's quite its own thing.
> 
> Artistic licence applied to build on canon from the end of 3.10. Set about two years in the future from that point. Assumes that greater demons are kind of unkillable eldritch horrors. There's no real plot here, just atmosphere and feelings.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/) and twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen) If you want to live tweet, you can use #junefic as a hashtag ♥

*

The streets of Alicante burn.

Magnus can smell the destruction all the way to the secluded courtyard of the keep, the ash and molten flesh and the fires that devour even the stone of the streets. The biting frost in the air can't purge the stench. He can't be the only one hoping that the wind changes at nightfall.

The covered bowl of soup warms his hands. It also reminds him to hurry before it cools. He can always keep it steaming with magic, but the mere thought puts an ache in his bones, after one more day of slow, grueling fighting where he's shed magic like water from a wellspring.

It was only yesterday that another of the demon towers fell. The hordes of Edom are tearing through Alicante brick by stone by pillar, the vengeful fury of their queen driving them as surely as their own hunger.

He finds Catarina on the balcony above the courtyard. She's bundled deep into her borrowed mantle of dark wool. Shadowhunter attire. It's been days—weeks—since either of them could have mustered a complaint or a sidelong joke at that. She came up from the main hall, which has been turned into a field infirmary, fed more injured in a straggling stream through the side door that opens onto the courtyard.

She's drained as empty as he feels. The familiar whisper of her magic against his senses is thin as a dying breath.

"It's not what I'd call a proper supper after a day like this," he says, "but it's hot, and not entirely offensive."

Balancing the bowl on the pitted stone banister, she leans down to spoon up the soup, practical and undignified. She's lost weight. He wants to ask one more time if she'll let him look for a chink in the infernal wards that gird the city. He could send her to safety, to the Spiral Labyrinth, to be with her daughter instead of here, elbow-deep in nephilim savaged by the swarming demons.

She's only here because she was with him when the containment wards rose, Lilith's hand evident in their sheer potency, and they were all trapped. No portals can be opened to or from Alicante. He nearly burned himself out by trying.

"Stop that," Cat says.

"I beg your pardon?" A minor commotion breaks out in the yard, a convenient excuse for him to peer down.

Familiar figures hurry in through the archway from the main gate. Alec, bow in hand—Magnus sighs as the ever-present fear loosens its hooks once again—is in the lead, shouting for a medic. Clary's hair is a splash of copper among the team that ferries another groaning casualty to the door. She makes them stop for long enough to trace a rune on the maimed soldier's exposed shoulder, the shimmer of the strokes plain in the deepening dusk.

Magnus steps back from the banister.

"You're thinking you put me at risk." Catarina's voice is soft and sensible. "We've been over this a dozen times, Magnus."

"I chose to be here." He feels his jaw stiffen. "You were only supposed to help heal Biscuit."

Cruelly speaking, that's the origin of their present desperate straits: the breaking of the demonic bond that tied Clary's life to that of her resurrected brother. Some day it will amuse Magnus that he planned one of his greatest feats of spellcraft over the two years he spent without his magic, but that day is yet to come.

If it ever comes. If Lilith's final vengeance for her lost child doesn't consume them all first.

That lost child did, before his second death, shatter the ancient safeguards around Alicante. He amassed half the army that gathers below their feet. The city is a killing ground, cut off from the other Shadowhunter strongholds around the world. And if Alicante falls, so will Idris. The hidden homeland, the beating heart of the nephilim.

In the not too distant past, Magnus might have been happy to let it crumble.

When Cat nudges his hand, still laid on the banister, he covers her fingers with his own. She must've come up here just to clear her head for a minute. What an excellent help he's being with that.

"I'm sorry," he says. "You've only thrown yourself in the middle of half the battlefields we've come across in the last three centuries. I should expect it by now."

"Only half? That's more restraint than I remember having." She comes into his space with the ease of those long years, her cheek to the side of his shoulder. "We all have our knacks, dear friend. Mine is for healing, yours for excessive self-recrimination."

Magnus lets up a helpless chuckle. He hasn't laughed much as of late.

"Who would you like me to blame? We're cornered here. I had a hand in this."

"Because you came up with magic that could foil the Mother of Demons? In the meantime, her son was busy undermining the only force in the mortal realm that can actually oppose her and have any hope of winning."

The Shadowhunters, she means, and Magnus has to concede that. The warlocks are too few in number, the Seelies too caught in their byzantine games of power and pleasure. The vampires and werewolves, if one is unkind, are too busy snapping at each other to heed an outside existential threat. If the nephilim _fall_ , like this, their society crushed with them, the living world may be ripe for cracking.

The soft-hearted part of his plan was the attempt to recover Clary alive. Would the man he was even ten years ago have weighed the life of one fledgling Shadowhunter as worth the effort?

Now he has a whole flock of them under his wing, though they're not the wide-eyed youngsters that he first met anymore. The search for Clary, the hunt for Jonathan, the rifts riven through the Clave have changed them all. Clary herself, pulled shuddering and gasping from the brink of the next world by Catarina, is a steel-edged shadow of her former vivacity.

In the courtyard, Clary takes an instruction from Alec and sends a string of flaming runes up into the air. The runes for a fire message are an art in themselves, and it's the only kind of message the enemy can't intercept or destroy.

On the opposite side of the valley, the Gard still stands. They were pressed to their present position at the old outpost during a thwarted attempt to retake Accords Hall. The smoke of the burning archives still curls from the shattered skeleton of the Hall.

A thousand years of history. Chronicles, mythologies, codices. Lies and identities, tales of valor and infamy all rising in ashen dregs into the pale winter sky. The nephilim have had time to twist their own story into countless knots.

Alec talks, sometimes, about unraveling those knots. Magnus knows he doesn't want the Clave gone. He wants it to change and remake itself into something better. Magnus tells him what he can: that the world is not stuck on a single course, if enough people believe it can be altered.

Alec makes him believe. The damnedest thing about Alec—a hard distinction to decide—is that he isn't a revolutionary, but he commits like one. He sets his eye on a dream and begins, patiently, diligently, carving the world into a suitable shape for it.

"He's asking permission to take the old tunnels back to the Gard," Magnus says, by way of briefing Cat, who's barely left the infirmary in the last two days. His arm finds its way around her shoulders. "Aboveground, it would be suicide."

"And underground?"

"Uncharted territory, as far as I understand. The tunnels were made hundreds of years ago. They mostly run so deep the demons might not have got there yet. He wants to lead out a scouting party first." This much, they've whispered to each other on the hems of scarce sleep, before tangling together in whatever privacy there is to be had.

Magnus might say, if he had any levity in him, that he's too old for wartime romances.

"'He', as in Alec, personally?" Cat perks up, not happily. "What about the concealment wards you put up around the keep? You'll have to show me how to renew them."

"We talked it through." Ever since they came to Alicante, it has been a constant: where Alec goes, Magnus goes. Officers and soldiers both glower at his presence, but those from the New York Institute close ranks around him with gratifying quickness. Alec has their hearts, and Magnus had the plan that brought down Jonathan Morgenstern.

They trust him now. They look to him for counsel, if not command.

"You talked, and?"

Magnus stopped before he got to the part that rakes quietly at his heart. "And I need to stay here."

She leans deeper into him. Her hand presses into his back in familiar, wordless comfort.

"We've brought in too many people to risk them being exposed," he says. "If we can smuggle the troops here back to the Gard, Alexander thinks there's a real chance of getting to her." He almost stretches that into a capital letter in his mind, _Her_ , this vast, implacable enemy of theirs. Speaking her name seems to draw her closer, however little Magnus is given to superstition.

"Well." Cat tries for her usual husky humor and falls short. "Young Mr. Herondale is getting antsy in his sickbed. I'll be happy to throw him out to watch Alec's back any day now."

"That's very good," Magnus says, equal parts sincere and resigned.

It all feels like too little. They've fortified their position best as they can, trying to turn their misfortune into opportunity. While the crumbling city center occupies the main enemy host, they've struck out into the fringes and retrieved trapped groups of fighters and civilians alike in ones or twos or fours. It's slow and dangerous work, done mostly in daytime to avoid the largely nocturnal demons, and every day the likelihood grows that the enemy realizes they have a substantial force at the outpost. One that could even be a threat.

One that _is_ a threat, a concealed blade that can, with luck and caution, find the heart of the invading army.

If Jace is finally awake and about, that'll be one less weight on Alec's mind. It should also lighten Magnus's: Alec will have his parabatai with him for the scouting mission. For Alec, in battle, that is better protection than any arcane aegis Magnus could summon.

Magnus is better off turning his efforts to veiling their presence here. Conserving his strength until they have an actual shot at reaching Lilith. That is, after all, the reason he has his magic back. He swore to find a way to tear down the Queen of Edom, who can't be slain. She can be caged, shackled, smothered. She can be pitched from her throne.

So Magnus made a promise to his father, for a thing his father wanted more than for his wayward son to return to the fold.

He's immortal again. His cuts heal without scars and his bones knit without flaw—this has been put to the test since they arrived in Alicante. Sometimes it, too, feels like mockery, when lives fade like embers around him, day after day.

He lets his eyes roam the courtyard, Catarina a welcome line of warmth along his side. The stonework of the keep is older than him, but etched with runes of preservation and safekeeping. It's stood through cycles of mountain weather and generations of occupants, and now it shelters them.

Alec is still outside below; people flock to him with news and questions as word of his return spreads. No one appointed him to command, but he's taken it by becoming a focal point among the fear and doubt, by tending to practical concerns, by grasping shaking shoulders and speaking with calm competence.

Magnus sees his facade slip and his shoulders slough as Isabelle blows out of the door to the infirmary. "Alec! He's awake!"

She means Jace, who is conscious again after a perilous head injury. Alec must know as much, but he buries Izzy in a rib-menacing hug, the people seeking his attention falling aside. Magnus can't tell what he says into her hair, but he radiates bone-deep elation, and Magnus feels it soothe his own underlying anxiety a notch.

There is his Alexander. His steadfast companion of almost three years. They've worked together tightly all through the siege, stood shoulder to shoulder against the recalcitrant old guard of the Clave, shouted to be heard and spoken softly to ears that might bend and listen. Alec's been carried bleeding and semi-coherent back into Magnus's trembling arms, and Catarina had to pull him away so she could perform the healing his hands would not stay steady for.

Still, Magnus is about to let Alec go again. As soon as Jace can join him, he'll head into another unknown danger to save the city of his people.

Clary clusters into Alec and Izzy's huddle. Izzy hugs her, too, and Clary returns the embrace, her somber bearing thawing some in Izzy's warmth. Even with half their extended family still in New York or cloistered away in more furtive refuges, Magnus is glad they're all here.

He confers with Izzy on securing the keep and gives Catarina a break from the infirmary whenever he can. He wakes in the night and listens to Alec breathe in the dark while sleep eludes him. He is desperately, unspeakably glad not to be somewhere safe.

No one says it aloud, but he's quite certain he isn't alone in the sentiment.

_If this is the end, then I'd rather face it with you._

"I have to go." Catarina extricates herself and gives his hand a last squeeze, as if guessing his thoughts. "Try not to freeze your toes brooding dramatically."

"I'm not brooding," Magnus protests, half distracted. "I'm—"

He's looking at the first fine fissures of a cataclysm that will rupture the world if they don't stop it. He's walked into the besieged city of a people that still, as a whole, hate and distrust his kind, because an adamant handful of them do _not._ Because one of them loves him enough to try and open all their eyes. If the world doesn't have a space for the two of them, Alec will make one, carve it out with his own hands until they fit.

Three years ago, Magnus would never have come here. He'd never have brought Catarina.

He's tasted mortality since. He's looked at Alec and seen, in nebulous terms, someone who'd stay with him for the rest of this brief life he now had. In more peaceful times, it would have sufficed. He found happiness in that thought.

They do not live in peaceful times.

They may not live long at all. If they fail, they may not even be names on marble plaques in the Silent City, or on the vellum pages of a codex in the Spiral Labyrinth. Magnus has thought about it. He's lived too long to be blind to his own ephemerality.

But for now, they live. For now, they have things to fight for.

Cat lingers at the top of the stairs that lead down to the courtyard. The hugging over, Izzy takes Alec and Clary's hands to tow them inside, to see Jace. Spurred by the thought that is slotting together for him, Magnus almost calls out to them, then snaps his mouth shut.

"I'm fine," he says to Cat.

"You have that look where you're having a revelation," she says, like the beloved friend she is, "and don't yet know if it's awful or wonderful."

"It's—it's both. I'll let you know which way it goes."

Alec's gone, but the medics don't suffer long visits, so he will return. Magnus needs to talk to him. He knows this with a visceral clarity he has not felt since the evening he crashed Alec's wedding, and that memory comes up in a more apt twist than it has any right to.

Catarina leaves. The small crowd disperses to their duties or to rest, as the ink of the night blots out color and detail. The steady shining clarity in Magnus does not wane, but he feels it as the need to move, to act, to speak, as a prickle in his palms, a shallowness of breath.

When Alec emerges again, a witchlight illuminating his way, Magnus dashes down the steps to him.

Alec's smile is tired, but it brightens his eyes. "Hey. I was coming to find you."

The ordinary fondness of his greeting makes Magnus swallow. He reaches out for Alec's gloved hand and draws it between both of his own, as if to test its weight and actuality. He should open with a pleasantry, some trifling observation that'd let them settle into each other's company.

"I have to—I want to ask you something."

"Sure." Alec's brows dip together, but he lets Magnus lead him under the archway, where they're in a blind spot between the guards scattered on the walls and walkways. "Is everything okay? You seem a bit worked up."

The witchlight casts Alec in a jagged interplay of light and shadow, scintillating on the stray snowflakes that cling to his hair and sharpening the fresh scar on his cheek. He, too, looks thinner—and older, more worn than his twenty-six years should make possible.

Magnus would break the world for him. Alec would not thank him for it. As much as violence is part of his birthright, as much as he relies on the role of the soldier to order his existence, Alec is a builder, not a destroyer. He believes his people worthy of redemption. He believes Magnus worthy of it, even in those moments when Magnus himself can't see as clearly.

And Magnus loves him. That is where everything begins.

"You're leaving soon," he gets out.

"Tomorrow," Alec says, too gently. "Brother Eskandar says Jace is good to go. I think they just want to get rid of him."

Magnus musters a smile at that. "And I know both of us went out today. I'll find some creative way to put my life on the line while you're in the tunnels. A dragon demon may fall out of the sky and crush either of us without warning. I'm not making a spiel about how I'm afraid for you."

"You had a whole nice lead-up to one going on there." Alec pockets the witchlight to free his hand, allowing only the clean snow on the ground to thin the darkness under the arch. He cups Magnus's cold cheek in his palm. "Just tell me already. I'll shut up until you're done."

"That might be best."

Alec nods. Magnus skims up against laughter, feeling out the wild and fanciful shape of this grave thought that he cannot shake.

"I just need you to know I'm not asking _because_ we're in constant mortal danger here." He clears his throat. His breath shivers into mist. "Well. It is a reason to hurry things along. But your—our world is on fire, and we are rather in the middle of it, and I realize that I want to be with you, like this, or in any way I can."

Alec's frown shifts from attentive to mystified. His hand falls from Magnus's cheek to the breast of his coat, and surely Alec must feel how his heart hammers.

"I looked for you for a century, and if someone had told me that the person who'd make me feel like this again was a Shadowhunter, I'd have laughed in their face. But here you are, and I would not be anywhere else." Magnus is gripping Alec's hand too hard. "Where you go, so will I. You make me believe in impossible things. You make me care far too much."

"Magnus—" Alec's eyes are wide, the faintest spark of realization shining in them.

"We're stuck in this forsaken fort in the middle of a siege. There's—there's no tradition we can follow here. But..." Magnus swallows. He's trying to compress years of trust and argument and work and devotion into a phrase, into a word, and maybe that's the point and the mercy of it, that there _is_ such a word, though he never thought it'd leave his mouth with this intent. "Marry me."

The spark flares into understanding on Alec's face. Emotions chase each other in his expression, and Magnus's spine tightens as he braces himself.

"I... here?" Alec glances around, a look that encompasses the courtyard and the blood and dirt churned into the snow by running feet, the beaten walls of the keep and the burning spires glowing in the dark distance. "Now?"

It's not a refusal. It's bafflement that Magnus has chosen this of all places and times, that he considers this an acceptable setting for the question. That it should be enough. Alec is young.

The fires in the city below may indeed lick at Magnus's heels, hastening him. Alec doesn't know to fear death quite like Magnus has had to learn. Fear of death—together or alone—did not drive Magnus to speak up.

Hope of life, though, hope of a way out of this city—that did.

"Now," he says, "and here. In whatever way you want. Given the conditions. We have until tomorrow."

Alec touches his cheek with a hand that's both taken lives and staved off death today. Dry, chill fingers land against his jittering pulse. Alec is doing the same thing Magnus did from the balcony above: reorienting himself, aligning the lines of the world on him.

The blood and ruin and the smoke-tinted air are still there, but Alec is looking at him.

"Yeah." Alec's nose presses into Magnus's cheek. "I will."

Magnus crushes him into a hug, gasping with amazement and relief. Joy comes a second later when Alec laughs, incredulous, and makes a game attempt at sweeping him off his feet. They stumble into the wall, the frozen stone at Magnus's back, Alec's face in his shoulder.

"You needed to _ask_?" Alec whispers.

"I didn't even phrase it as a question." _Oh_ , Magnus thinks, though, _I did need to ask._

In the push and pull of their relationship, he's used to being the one that lets Alec take the first step. With him and beyond, Alec is too willing to be content with what others leave him.

He needed to ask because Alec deserved to be asked. If it only dawns on Magnus here, when the coming of tomorrow is mostly up to luck or dubious provenance, then he had better make the most of it now.

There are voices at the door across the courtyard, Clary and Isabelle from the sound of them. They seem to carry to Magnus from another reality, slightly remote, brushing against the one that is framed by his and Alec's bodies, slotted together.

He makes himself remember that time has not, in fact, stopped for them.

"We're about to have company."

"Can we tell them?" Alec's question is heartwrenchingly tentative.

"As opposed to keeping this lightning engagement between us?" The fact that he just proposed to Alec settles into its shape. He should probably have a troth of some sort to offer. "We rather should tell them. I don't think there's any helping it now."

He's reluctant to leave Alec's arms, though the night cold will seep through their clothing layers sooner rather than later. The amenities of the outpost are spartan but current, blending the more practical branches of angelic magic with mundane technology, and the rooms are drafty but mostly warm. They should head indoors.

Alec is about to say something when Izzy spots them, or at least their silhouettes in the shadow of the arched passage. "Alec? You're gonna be late for dinner—oh, hi, Magnus."

Flashing a smile of impeccable innocence, she waves her fingers at them as they pull apart. Behind Izzy's shoulder, Clary actually giggles. Magnus still relishes the sound.

"Sorry," she says. "We'll just wait inside for you guys, right?"

Their misread of the situation is obvious. Between the strictures of safety and available space, privacy is a fleeting luxury for them all.

"We'll be there in a moment." Magnus isn't sure how well he does at smiling pleasantly when a part of him is still tangled up in Alec and the fragile, stunning feeling unfolding between them. Alec's hand lingers at his hip.

As soon as the girls are gone, Alec lets out the sigh he was holding in, half amused, half exasperated.

"We do look a bit scandalous, no?" Magnus says. "Though it's nippy for a proper tryst."

For his trouble, Alec quirks into a smile. "At least you found an idiot-proof excuse for us to scandalize everybody here tonight."

Heat flickers down Magnus's body and up along his wind-bitten cheeks. " _Alexander_."

"Really? You're 'Alexander'ing me after _this_? The whole mid-danger proposal thing." Alec muffles laughter, none too subtly. "I'm gonna revoke your full name privileges for a while."

"That I should like to see," Magnus retorts, "given how much you like hearing it."

Alec pulls him closer, the threat of more passersby forgotten, and kisses him. Magnus tips back into the kiss as Alec deepens it, warm and certain and heady in a way neither of them can yet put into words in the quiet swell of new understanding. It tastes of things to come, or so Magnus hopes.

They separate slowly, Magnus's hands still grasping Alec's collar.

"Tonight, then." He's coming to comprehend that he meant it. He has little idea of Shadowhunter rites in this matter, and those of his own people are both few and varied, but they'll do what they've always done: carve out their own way of doing things. In one evening, if need be.

"Yeah," Alec says, like he too is gradually moving on to the practicalities. "Time to tell the family, hm?"

Magnus nods against his temple, his heart full. "Let us then."

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

Alec hasn't quite finished reeling by the time he gathers his brother and sister, plus Clary, in the old guard room off the main entrance, and tells them that he's getting married.

His life happens fast these days. He hopes he can land on his feet this time.

"Buddy," Jace says, "if this is payback for all the drama Izzy and I dragged you into growing up, then—you're within your rights. Carry on."

He got released from the infirmary thirty minutes ago, so Alec does not kick him. The urge passes.

"Are you _sure_ you and Magnus aren't in a strange yet sweet competition for who can make the most over-the-top romantic gesture for the other?" Seated in a wall alcove that seems to have once housed a statue, Clary clicks her heel against the plinth. "He probably just won."

It would, Alec muses, be too much to ask that they could be anything but the shining beacons of sensitivity they always are. Their nettling is kind of comforting.

"I don't know," he says. "I did say yes."

There's too much sheer emotion in him. He's dazed by it after weeks of trying to stay calm and weigh their dwindling options, running the cold calculations of the siege in his head from the minute he wakes to the one he falls asleep.

Izzy sidles in under his arm, the quietest of their troop in the wake of his news.

"What's up?" He didn't have any real time to picture how his nearest and dearest would take this whole wild idea of marrying him off while they're surrounded by demons, but her reaction doesn't quite track. "Thought you'd be out to decorate some dusty old hall so you can give me away in style."

"In a minute," she says. "Let me be happy for you, mm?"

Alec is happy to let her. He squeezes her close, and she gives a soft, humming sigh.

"So _she_ can give you away?" Jace puts on a credible impression of soul-deep hurt. "I should at least get to duel Izzy for the honor."

"You're marrying a warlock on whatever workable props we can find in this banged-up outpost, so if you wanna have two—whatever the plural of _suggenes_ is—that doesn't look like a sticking point," Clary says, and when did she become the sensible one? Somewhere in the almost two years that she spent as Jonathan's captive-slash-coerced ally, so Alec spares it no further thought. She's back with them and getting better.

"Two's good. We're pretty much making this up as we go." Alec tilts against the doorjamb.

Magnus went off to find Catarina, and Alec wonders if he should put out a notice to the more than a hundred people sheltering at the fort. If he doesn't, word will spill out, anyway. It would not be an invitation. Most of the people he'd want to be here are somewhere on the other side of the wards, bracing for Alicante to either break the siege or fall trying.

He's got these three and Catarina, and a Silent Brother at that. Maybe it'll do when the one place in the world he thought sacrosanct, impregnable, is turning to ash and rubble around them.

He doesn't feel the same attachment to Alicante that he's grown into for New York. Alicante isn't _his_ city, but it is the haven of his people. His people in the broad sense. His kind, his duty, his lineage. There are other ties that bind.

"Anyway." Izzy slides free from Alec's hold. "I do know a dusty old hall we can use." An old conspiracy glints in her eye. "Come to think of it, have you still got the thing? Magnus got the jump on you, but—"

"Oh. Right." He fumbles for his thigh holster and the pocket sewn into it. Clary and Jace both lean in, their attention inescapable, so Izzy kind of botched the secrecy there. Not that this ever was a secret to be kept from them in particular.

It's a thought he abandoned, two years ago. Or no, not abandoned, but wrapped up with care and put away to wait for a better time. He has to unbuckle the holster to get under the spare bowstring and backup stele and pens and other accumulated oddities. The small flat box weighs more in his palm than he remembered.

Izzy didn't make it for him for this occasion, but he had once thought of it as a promise.

"You don't think it's a bit morbid?" Alec opens the box before Clary, hovering, helps herself in the matter. She exhales sharply when he unfolds the silk square protecting the necklace.

"I think it's you." Izzy shrugs one shoulder like she did when he brought the idea to her, half convinced it was stupid even as he presented it. "You're weird and broody and Magnus loves you, so you might as well hang a necklace on it."

"Alec," Jace cuts in, the gravity of his tone echoed by a tug in the bond between them. "A word."

Pointing a cautioning finger at Clary not to touch the object of the discussion, Alec lets himself be drawn into the corridor. The chill winding through the fort accosts them at once, so he pushes the door shut.

The fresh, ragged scarring across Jace's temple adds to his haggard appearance, but he's no worse than half the people here. "Pretty sure I wouldn't know a romantic gesture if it bit me in the ass, but this one has you pretty twisted. Not the proposal. The piece of jewelry."

He taps the heel of his palm over Alec's heart to underscore his point. There's nothing tender to the gesture, unlike Magnus's habit of letting his hand linger at much the same spot. From Jace, it's a spur. _What's eating you?_

A memory. A possibility he'd quashed. He doesn't know.

Alec closes his eyes. "It's, uh, a relic of its time."

"Looked like one of your arrowheads on a chain to me. Cute, I guess."

Alec knows he isn't the person that originally had this idea anymore, but he still is the person that carried that box in his holster for months and months, because the holster is the one thing he wears all the time that Magnus is least likely to incidentally inspect.

"It's the arrow Catarina pulled out of me when—" _When we thought Clary died. When you were possessed. The arrow the Owl stabbed me with._ He gestures, trying to encircle the idea. "It's a long story."

Jace gives him a look that translates to _I'm withholding judgment, so keep talking._ Alec should probably see it for the expression of undeserved love and patience that it is.

"It was a weird time. All the stuff with Clary and Jonathan aside, my immortal boyfriend was... suddenly not, and he wouldn't blame me for any of it, and I didn't have any fucking idea how to deal."

He thinks Magnus did blame him, sometimes, even if not to his face. A part of him would have welcomed it. The rest contented itself with the slow support of Magnus orienting himself to a life without magic, through the practical concerns and the feverish research episodes and the months Magnus spent on a rambling walkabout, reporting in chiefly in night-time text messages and brief postcards in his immaculate handwriting. The last of the cards fell into the Institute's mundane P.O. box weeks after his return. Alec still has them all in a drawer in his bedroom.

It was the third month of the globetrotting journey when Alec took the arrowhead and went to Izzy. She's no Iron Sister, but the weapon master of an Institute has to work with adamas. She knew enough to do a beautiful job.

A beautiful job Alec never took to its conclusion.

"She rounded the edges and put the runes on it. I put it in my pocket and kept it around for whenever I'd work up the courage to talk to Magnus." Self-irony scratches at his tone.

"You _were_ saving your drama quota for this. I'm getting the sense that that—" Jace jabs an evocative finger at the shut door "—wasn't a proposal waiting to happen, though."

"Not exactly. Fuck." Alec is abruptly feeling the brunt of the entire situation. "I'm still getting back to the fact that he's my immortal boyfriend again. We spent so much time looking for solutions. I never let myself think about..." He tries to stifle the admission. Izzy might let him get away with it; Jace won't. "Okay, sometimes I thought we might grow old together. You know. While trying not to let it be an answer to the problem."

Two years is a long time to live in transition. It's enough time for uncertainty to become routine, for your mind to branch out into _what if_ and _maybe_ and _we might_ , however sternly you tell it to stay on the path.

Yet something about those years says to Magnus that when push comes to shove, when they're all pressed to the last ledge before the abyss, Alec is what he wants. Alec is who he chooses to spend his scarce time on.

"I'm gonna leave the big speeches to you," Jace says, his hand familiar and brusque at the back of Alec's neck, "but since I've got this uncancelable lifetime subscription to your issues, here's a thing." Alec stirs from his worry, almost in spite of himself, because every little tell from Jace says Jace needs his attention.

It hasn't been simple for either of them. They have Clary back, but one ramification of Jace's possession proved permanent: Magnus's counterspell broke Lilith's grip but did not restore his feelings for Clary. They have grown again since, to different effect, for a girl different from the one they lost.

"I'm listening." Alec nods his brow to Jace's and slips into the steadying silence of the bond. They're not in battle. It soothes him anyway.

Jace says, quiet, "However much things have sucked in the last three years—and they've sucked a lot—I wouldn't take back that guy you were before them. That's on you, but it's also on Magnus. He makes you better. More yourself, if we're getting sappy about it."

"At least _you_ are getting sappy about it."

"All I'm saying is, you better fucking go and figure out some way to let him put a wedding rune on you. Time's short."

Alec feels a warm, aching lump in his throat. "You're a worse busybody than Iz."

"Nah, I just know where to aim it." Jace steps back with a restored air of insouciance. "She's the equal-opportunity meddling type. I save it for that about annual event of you letting yourself have a freakout."

"I'm not."

"Mm-hm."

The thought occurs to Alec that this is his second go at getting married, and when he thinks back to the first time, his foremost memory is the rigid resolution he forced himself to maintain. It'd have been a good, sensible marriage. Lydia would've been a smart match for him. He liked and respected her—he still likes and respects her, and looks forward to seeing her if they ever make it to the Gard.

Until the moment Magnus flung open the door to the hall, he was calm. Steeled to heed the path he thought he had to walk.

"Maybe I am. Freaking out a little."

"I think that's how you know it matters," Jace says, in the same tone, frayed with hope. He wouldn't use it with anybody but Alec.

They slouch against the wall, shoulder to shoulder.

Jace shifts. "If you want to have Izzy give you away, I'll live."

"This is the last time I'm ever getting married, so I mean what I said. Two is good."

"Okay." A pause. "You gonna tell us what the deal is with the necklace?"

Alec rubs a thumb across his palm and pretends it is to keep his hands warm. "I should probably tell Magnus."

Jace huffs out a laugh. "Glad to know you're still a cagey asshole, even with all this extra drama."

Leaning into his brother, Alec takes the opportunity to draw a few deep breaths, before the rest of the night descends on him.

*

In the meantime, Izzy has roped Clary into planning. Alec has to surmise Izzy also briefed Clary on some version of the necklace's origin story, because Clary hands the closed box back to him with a serene flourish and flashes a smile before Izzy drags her out of the room. He admits that defeat with a shrug.

He is also pretty sure he has nothing to wear for his own wedding. They live more or less in camp conditions. He's thanked the Angel more than once for the food stores they found in the basements and that became the backbone of the plan to use the fort as a more permanent refuge. All his clothes fit in a backpack that sits at the foot of his bed, wherever he lands on a night.

He accompanies Jace to the kitchens, where they have missed dinner, but are passed bowls of thick soup and a chunk of oat bread to split among themselves. He knows not to underestimate the comfort provided by hot food, and it works its humble wonders this time, too.

"I'm going after Izzy." Jace cracks Alec's short-lived tranquility. "If she's thinking of the hall I think she is, they're gonna want some help with the furniture."

"They've got strength runes," Alec says, inane.

"Not a replacement for an extra pair of hands. You don't want your nuptials ruined because of broken bones in the family, I bet."

With that, Jace leaves him. Alec guesses that his siblings are going up to the old solar, which their occupying force has left untouched beyond ransacking it for supplies. The stairs there are narrow and dilapidated, which is a practical hurdle for using the story, but if you need a place for an impromptu party, it seems a likely spot.

He should follow them. Make himself useful.

Somehow it seems his good sense has leaked out and redistributed itself among his loved ones. They're all running around organizing, and all he can do is oscillate between faint panic and dazed happiness.

At least the happiness seems to be winning. Seated at the end of a kitchen bench, the evening's work going on in the background, he opens the jewelry box again.

The adamas arrowhead is blunted and smoothed, set in a fine steel chain, turned from a tool into—whatever Alec thought it could be. A reconciliation. A hope. An oath he didn't know how to make. Izzy carved two stylized runes into it, runes such as Alec might wear on his own skin to show his commitment.

Magnus has been, as a bare minimum, in his every other waking thought since they met. He's learned the difference between the dazzling desire of his first attraction and the long-suffering work of loving somebody. With the grace of hindsight, what did he know when he told Magnus he loved him, that morning on the Institute steps?

He wasn't wrong, though. It was just early. If he gives himself a little mercy here.

"Alexander."

A sharp edge of the box digs into Alec's palm as he hides it in a fist, following Magnus's voice about two steps to his right. Their predicament has left its marks on Magnus, too, in subtle shadows under his eyes, in the way he no longer pulls all his lines into perfect order before letting anybody lay eyes on him. Alec knows his face softens of its own accord, lit up simply by looking at Magnus.

"Hey." His free hand seeks out Magnus's, and Magnus extends his own easily. Okay. The proposal may have been a bolt from the blue, but Alec is _stupidly_ in love. This should be a confirmation. "Can we—"

Magnus has a glimmer. "Biscuit has informed me I shouldn't see you before the ceremony, but since we barely have one worked out, I thought maybe I should."

"You definitely should." Alec stands up, tucking his fisted hand under his sleeve best as he can. "Somewhere not here?"

They end up in one of the guard nooks that are scattered along the twisting corridors, set behind a shuttered arrow slit, big enough for an ancient wooden bench that fits the two of them. The storm lantern on the opposite wall sheds enough light to see by.

"This would also be a passable spot for a tryst," Magnus opines, glancing around their hideaway. "If I could count on you to stay quiet."

"We're a little past _tryst_ if you're gonna make an honest man out of me before morning," Alec manages, his cheeks nipped red by more than the bite in the air. Magnus's warm tone, coupled with the immediate mental images, reminds him inopportunely of how little time they've had alone in the recent weeks.

"Making you any more honest than you already are is probably beyond my capacity."

"Maybe." Alec crooks his smile, then lets it smooth away. "Magnus, I—this is so far from anything I feel like you deserve. You said you wanted to do this any way we could, and we can work out something. That's what we do, I guess. Make the best of it that we can."

"And what do you think I deserve?" It's not a trick question. It might be, if Magnus didn't speak it with such soft plainness.

"The world?" Alec swallows. Magnus's hand is still in his own. Magnus tightens his grip, but doesn't protest. "I mean. Every time I feel like giving up, every time I wear myself out trying to wrangle this mess, you help me make sense of it. Not always with advice. Just by being here. I mean those moments when... when _everything_ is too big to comprehend, but you make it real."

No one obligated Alec with the fates of the hundred souls in this fort. He accepted them, one by one, as they were led through the rune-graven gate, opened just enough to let them pass. He accepted Magnus long before that, he realizes, and that duty is heavier and dearer still.

Magnus is looking at their hands. The side of his shoe is scuffed where his foot lies folded neatly across his knee. Alec wants to take him somewhere warm and safe, somewhere he doesn't have to get up in the middle of the night to tend to a faulty ward or butt heads with Clave officers so lacking in humility that they don't see Magnus is half the reason they're alive.

Somewhere this war is not. But this is where they are.

"I told you that I'd dreamed of meeting someone like you," he says then. "I'm not so sure I was ever capable of dreaming you."

Magnus chuckles, and the sound peals against Alec's heart like a bell. "Because I'm better, or because I'm worse?"

"Both?" Alec has lost his handle on this conversation and he might be beyond caring. "You're more. I'm not gonna pretend you never piss me off. But you also never let me off easy. You make me work to be better. Uh. I should put some of this in my wedding vows and not spoil all of it in advance."

"Wedding vows _is_ one thing I imagine we can manage," Magnus mumbles, but Alec can tell his focus is elsewhere, caught on an earlier point.

They've lived with each other for long enough for all these things to cluster close, gentle, everyday truths that are now bare and delicate in the light of this new step. This stone in the path, leading up to a bright, unknown height.

"I do want a rune," he says. Not all Shadowhunter runes serve a pragmatic purpose. They are a life record as much as a help on the hunt, care and grief and faith written on the body. "If not the wedded union one, then... something just for you."

Magnus's hand on his cheek almost startles him. "I'd be honored."

Laughter breaks through Alec's apprehension, the candid, careless kind that pretty much only Magnus can get out of him. He lets it come. "Did you put it like that because it sounded all grave and you figured I'd like that?"

To Alec's relief, Magnus melts into a laugh of his own. "I think I have a solid idea of what you like by now. I'm serious. You want to carry something of me on you. It's not a small thing."

There it is, an impeccable opening handed to him on a platter, and so Alec seizes it.

"I've got something," he begins. "Something I meant for you, and it was a while ago, but the timing never worked out. So I'm still carrying it around."

The line of Magnus's mouth seams, and Alec watches him shape into careful expectation. There is no reluctance to it, which is good, but Alec has changed the moment.

He withdraws the box he pushed hastily into a pocket and holds out the necklace, nestled in the loops of its chain, glittering in the yellow glow of the gas flame. The light picks out the runes for _love_ and _promise_ in the pale metal.

Magnus cants his head to the left, a small, telling motion.

"It wasn't supposed to be a proposal," Alec says. "I'm not telling you that to make this seem less important—more like, I wouldn't have presumed? At that point?"

"I see. When was this?"

"After you lost your magic."

Magnus weighs this. Alec leans liminally closer, his open palm holding the necklace rested on his own leg.

"It's from my arrow. The one that almost killed me." He doesn't speak of whose hand forced the the arrow tip into his heart—it doesn't matter. They both know.

"But it did not." Magnus's voice is hushed, a little odd, but not reticent, and Alec thinks, buoyant with relief, _You get it. Of course you would._

"I know it's not really how this is done, but neither are we. I've made so many mistakes trying to do right by you. People still don't believe we're going to last. Nobody will make a place for us if we don't." A few people will. That's gotten Alec through a good many days.

"All of that is true." Magnus fiddles with a smooth silver ring. He doesn't wear many these days, after a demon caught its tooth in one of his signet rings and nearly tore off several fingers. The sight of his near-bare hands still dismays Alec a little. One more thing in the column of things he wants: for Magnus to wrap himself in all his gleam and glory again.

That is for later, though.

"This was—is—a promise." Alec averts his eyes from Magnus to the arrowhead. "That arrow didn't kill me. You came back to me from Edom. So whatever else comes at me, however far away from each other we are, I'll come back to you. Every time." _Until my last breath._ "As long as you want me to."

"I'd kiss you now," Magnus says, choked, a notch above him.

Alec lifts his head, the _yes_ on his lips. It peters into a smothered groan as Magnus backs him to the wall and they crash together, the kiss raw and ragged for all its ardor. Alec pulls Magnus closer, into the shadowed half of the nook, and drags him back at his first try to end the kiss. Exhaustion and anguish have kept such close company with them lately that the desire breaking through is a wide and heady sweep through them both.

"So," Alec says, gasping more than speaking, "if I give this to you tonight, you won't throw it in my face?"

Magnus catches hold of his hand, the one clasping the necklace, and kisses the backs of his bent fingers. Alec glimpses the dark gold of his unmasked eyes.

"Try me."

"If we're gonna get as far as any ceremony, you may wanna get off my lap." Alec says this even as his free hand splays over Magnus's lower back, in no rush to let him go.

Sighing, Magnus replaces his glamour, his eyes opening brown. "I'd thought to say something about our wardrobe. I can't summon anything from beyond the city, but I have a few tailoring charms up my sleeve."

"I knew there was a reason I kept you around." Alec draws him into a third kiss, and maybe on the strength of it, slow and unabashedly sweet, he can bear not to have Magnus in his arms for a few more hours. "I should write to Mom. You realize that when we make it through this, we're gonna need a follow-up party for everybody that's not here?"

"I do." Magnus gets to his feet. "You have no idea how much I look forward to that."

"I have a pretty good guess." Alec follows him, a stubborn warmth settling behind his ribs. "I figure that if you want a wedding reception, you need to get married first."

"Oh, darling," Magnus says, "I intend to."

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Ruth for calming my writing jitters. ♥
> 
> Here we go, darlings, the last chapter of this superbly indulgent thing is now finished. Only a couple of months later. xD With the way life's been lately, that isn't so bad.
> 
> I'm on tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/) and twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen) If you want to do a read-along or shout on twitter, #junefic is my hashtag.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this last dance!

*

To her credit, Isabelle has done her utmost with the main room of the solar.

Magnus assumes the solar once served as the quarters of the fort's commanding officer. Some of the furniture must be closer to his age, dark Brocelind birch worn to a smooth, notched luster. The walls are mortared white and draped in faded tapestries, which is at least cheerier than the undecorated stone of the lower levels.

Clary is wrestling candles into a wrought-iron holder, and Magnus smells a faint sweet whiff of beeswax. Izzy taps her on the shoulder, and the girls fall into a huddled conference.

It is all rather a shambles. It fills him with absurd joy.

The plink of a discordant note turns his head to the right of the room. Jace has pulled a dusty sheet off what indeed is a burnished hardwood piano standing against the wall, somehow wrestled up to this high room.

Next to Magnus, Catarina mutters under her breath. As she goes over to Jace, Magnus already has the punchline. She devised the charm in the first decades of their acquaintance, and he's seen her wield it to both brilliant and devastating social effect since.

She lays a hand on the piano. Her magic whispers in the air. The simple melody Jace produces at her prompt rings flawless as a clear summer sky.

Friends, light, music. What more can Magnus ask for, in a moment like this?

 _Magnus Bane_. The voice ringing in his mind is raspy but not unkind. _We need to speak._

He turns to face the stooped, cowled form of Brother Eskandar. Catarina is better acquainted with the venerable Silent Brother, by stint of their long shared hours in the infirmary.

The order stands over all Shadowhunter ceremonies. Magnus can't give Alec the rune Alec wants, not by his own hand, but he can allow this part of Alec's native traditions. For himself, he's been to weddings across centuries and the world over. He'd _take_ a lavish party that'd go on for three days, but the important thing is that he gets to speak his promise to Alec with people they both love bearing witness.

"What can I do for you?" He finds himself standing up straighter. Eskandar is old as dust, even by Silent Brother reckoning. He might well be Magnus's senior, too.

 _Have you ever attended a Shadowhunter wedding?_ Eskandar's tone almost implies curiosity.

"I have, on the odd occasion. I don't imagine the details have changed much, but if you'd like to refresh my memory..."

 _Good. They haven't._ Tucking a brown, parched hand into his robes, Eskandar brings out a folded sheet of paper. _There's one matter I would make you aware of, before we begin._

"That sounds a little foreboding."

A hint of humor echoes in the mental voice. _I have a brother you once knew. He speaks highly of you and your integrity._

Magnus draws an easier breath. "I still know him. And I've certainly tried to stay worthy of Brother Zachariah's good opinion."

 _This is why I feel I can tell you. This, and your care for my young namesake._ Silent Brothers don't smile. The stitches rather prevent that. Magnus still feels that he's been weighed and found deserving. _I trust you not to misuse this knowledge, Magnus Bane._

That seems an impressive amount of hedging for whatever matrimonial secret of the nephilim he's about to learn. "I am hereby sworn to silence." He only lets a trickle of amusement into his voice.

His whimsy evaporates as Eskandar unfolds the paper. _You are the blood of a fallen angel. That opens up certain possibilities._

Magnus's heart leaps, wild and sudden, against his ribs.

*

He hasn't quite regained his balance by the time everything is ready. It may also be that he's traded one reason for nerves for another, and his head isn't keeping up.

Against the velvet-black night behind the windows, the solar appears an oasis of warmth. Clary conquered the illumination: with Jace's help, even the two-tiered candelabra in the ceiling blazes with candles. Isabelle worked her diplomatic charm in the kitchens to the effect that they have a late wedding dinner. Vestiges of Catarina's magic fill the room, in the pure sound of the piano as Jace shapes a melody, in the colorful paper flowers hung on the windows and chairs and the piano, gold and cobalt against the wood tones. Cat stands with Izzy by the set table, absorbed in a debate over wine bottles.

"Hey." Clary nudges Magnus's shoulder. He steps inside from where he stopped in the doorway. She looks apprehensive, which is not unlike he feels.

"Yes?" He veers to the right of the door, aware that they aren't yet all here. Alec had a last round of people to talk to, and Magnus spent the last of his tactful patience on letting him see to it.

"I've got something for you," Clary says. "Blue's the warlock color for weddings, right?"

"At times." Magnus is wearing what amounts to the Sunday best of a man in desperate straits, black and burgundy, the full complement of his rings the gaudiest detail about him.

Alec will hardly care, so Magnus is trying not to.

Clary holds up an elaborate tissue-paper rose, attached to a pin where the stem would begin. The translucent petals are a deep indigo shade. "Something borrowed, something blue?"

A little choked with fondness, he nods. "Thank you, my dear. That's lovely."

"Can I—?"

"Please." He stands still so she can fix the flower to the lapel of his jacket. Focusing on the hue, he brushes a hand along his hair to stroke a streak of matching color into it.

"Oh, that's great. _Très chic_." She backs up to appreciate the effect. "You know—I know Catarina's gonna be with you, and you've got people who should be here, way over me, but..."

As much as she's matured, as much of that has been due to bitter necessity, she sounds young, an aching reminder of the lost girl who came to him demanding the return of her memories. He pitied her then, for the most part. They've all shown their quality since then.

"Biscuit," he says, "it would be my honor and privilege to have you stand with me. As a friend."

Careful not to crush the paper rose, she hugs him, burrowing her nose in his shoulder. "You saved my life. You've done that like a hundred times, sure, but this time was still pretty special."

It's been a few scarce weeks since the spell Magnus devised detached her from her brother. It ended a long captivity. For Magnus, the return of his magic was a thing of vital joy, the mending of a scar that had cleaved through to his soul. Clary's return among her family—her family in the true sense of the word—has been much more mixed.

"There'll be time for you to pay me back in kind." He holds her close and folds his own words away. Right now, they're all safe and well. Right now, they don't think of tomorrow.

"Thank you," Clary mumbles, before drawing back.

The fall of familiar feet in the stairway startles Magnus to alertness. Alec slows down as he closes in on the door, still out of sight, but the others have heard him, too.

Clary lays her stele, made by Isabelle in the image of the one she lost, into Magnus's palm. "A hooded figure whispered in my ear that you might need this."

Still wordless at the prospect, Magnus tucks the stele into his pocket.

*

As Alec rounds the doorjamb into the room, Magnus's first thought is, _Thank all the kindly powers, he's as nervous as I am._

He cuts a strapping figure in the suit that Izzy found for him to borrow and Magnus adjusted with a few magic-fueled tugs of the seams. It's a stern black, not the muted gold and white of the last time Magnus saw him in wedding attire, and yet it sits better on his shoulders. If one is to be wed in mid-siege, surely battle colors aren't misplaced.

 _You're just happy I'm not walking into the ceremony in field gear_ , Alec teased as Magnus worked on getting the suit to fit.

Magnus rolled his eyes and didn't say, _I'd marry you stark naked if it came to that_.

The others shuffle to their places, Isabelle and Jace to the left, Catarina and Clary to the right, so they sketch out the rough lines of a ceremonial setup. Brother Eskandar, with his gaunt, gentle air, stands between them.

Magnus knows they're there. It's only that Alec has pre-empted them, with his barely tamed hair and shining eyes and the way he stands, tall and loose-limbed with startled delight that won't yet unruffle itself into calmer contentment. How could it? It catches Magnus, too, in a fizz of radiant joy in his veins.

"You look good," Alec says.

Magnus hears it for the cheerful understatement it is. "And you're very dashing."

Up ahead, Jace clears his throat. It sounds half like a chuckle.

Their hands collide, Alec's right with Magnus's left, because neither of them can quite look away. Glancing down, Alec takes Magnus's hand properly, his grip warm and steady. Like he'd be happy for Magnus to lead him anywhere.

They go down the middle of the room together.

Brother Eskandar takes them through the sparse words of the rite, speaks their names, then nods to Alec.

Alec doesn't truly say anything that would be new to Magnus: a few ardent words of love and loyalty. Magnus stays dry-eyed until Izzy brings the arrowhead necklace to Alec, and Magnus bends his head so Alec can close the clasp around his neck. Alec runs his hands under Magnus's jaw, a gesture out of step with the ritual, a thoughtless tenderness.

Magnus lifts a mildly watery smile up to his face and bends his tongue to the futile task of expressing his fathomless regard. Alec knows. Everyone here knows. He keeps it brief, then, even as Alec's eyes brighten suspiciously.

Catarina has the ring, one of Magnus's own, that he'd thought to give Alec. It would suffice until he could find or make one more suited to Alec's style.

The stele is a fine, whispering weight in his pocket. The fingers of his free hand trace the shape on the paper in the air, one more time.

"That being said," he says then, "and it being a little early for this request, would you unbutton your collar for me?"

Alec does a charming, silent _excuse me?_ with his eyes. Behind Magnus, Clary fails utterly at suppressing a giggle.

The skin under Alec's left clavicle is free of runes. Even Magnus knows that runes are most potent when drawn close to the heart. He has spared a thought, sometimes, to the fact that Alec has no permanent runes there.

"I have your mark," he continues, when Alec keeps frowning at him. "You wanted to have one for me."

Distantly he can sense Jace and Izzy's confusion, Catarina's curiosity, Clary's attempts to smother her glee at being in on the secret. Alec's expression as Magnus withdraws the stele eclipses all of them. It hovers at puzzlement and then takes a swift curve into elated, incredulous comprehension.

"Yeah." Alec's hands go to his buttons.

The stele hums in Magnus's grasp as a subtle loop closes between him and the instrument, alien to his ingrained understanding of how to channel his power. Still, as he presses the faceted tip to Alec's skin, biting the inside of his lip, something in him stirs. He begins the rune: a crescent shape from top to bottom, the angled Y shape to fill it. Alec holds his breath, then remembers to release it, and Magnus doesn't know if it hurts.

He draws the last small curves. They sink into Alec's skin, smooth and inky, easy as you please.

_You have the blood of a fallen angel. A stele will bend to your purpose, but it will be draining._

The loop snaps, and Magnus gasps at the dizzy wave that rushes through him, like a surfeit of magic poured from him too quickly. Stars flicker in the corners of his eyes, so he presses them shut.

When Alec makes a small, concerned noise, Magnus finds the wits to breathe out, "I'm fine. I'm just—" Blindly, he sets a hand on Alec's cheek, opens his eyes. "I'm fine. It's done."

Alec pulls him in, brow to brow with him, with a hoarse, astonished laugh, a haste in his gestures.

It must be the messiest, least graceful wedding kiss Magnus has ever encountered. It's also his own, so that is, in the final analysis, rather fine. Alec's nose is smooshed against his cheek, the kiss skewed, warm and wonderful. Magnus covers the rune with his palm.

 _Wedded union_ , it says. Even Alec's warlike people understand something of happiness.

When they break apart, Alec is looking at him with soft awe. Magnus's face is still cradled in his hands. "How did you—god, how are you even _real_?"

"Easily, Alexander." The very greatest part of him wants to lean back into Alec, a dazed, delicious fancy. "I'll explain later."

 _Later_ is a necessary concession, because the rest of their wedding party is still in the room. As soon as Alec glances her way, Isabelle rushes to them both, with hugs and a smile to outshine the near-full moon behind the windows. Jace embraces Alec with rough-and-ready joy and squeezes Magnus's arm with a more reserved strand of the same.

"I'm not gonna say he's your problem now," Jace says to Magnus, as Catarina takes Alec's hands in warm congratulation. "He's never gonna stop being my problem. But you make him happy, and that's a feat for the ages, so—look after him."

"Between us, we might just be able to keep him well."

"You married a hero." Jace shrugs. "Guess you don't have any illusions about that."

"None whatsoever." That Magnus can say in honesty. "Thank you. For trusting him to me."

"He trusted himself to you. All I do is watch his back." Jace smiles, a touch crooked, solidly approving. "And there's Clary angling to hug you, and _there_ is Izzy with the good champagne she somehow dug out of this damn ruin, so that's all I had."

When it comes to Alec, Jace's regard is notoriously hard-won, and for all the hardship that Magnus has been through on his behalf, here they see eye to eye. Alec is one thing neither of them will compromise.

Then Clary hugs Magnus, and Izzy hands him a champagne flute, and by the mercy of some capricious power it is _actual_ champagne. They pile new language variants of _cheers!_ and _to your health!_ onto the toast until even Magnus and Catarina can't think of more.

From there on, it is a merry blur of excellent wine, quite nice food, and some of his favorite people in the world.

The night swirls frost across the windows as the sky clears. Jace takes to the piano and plays a rambling selection from memory. Magnus dances with Alec to a waltz that begins as "The Blue Danube", then drifts into something obscure and Chopinesque. When Alec finally begs off, laughing and kissing Magnus for underhanded persuasion purposes, Magnus lets him go. Catarina steps in in Alec's stead; they turn to the music and talk, slow and comfortable, for a precious while.

No doubt using the same forbidden arts as Izzy employed with the champagne, Clary has scrounged up an instant camera. She flits to and fro, snapping up the sight of Izzy and Alec resting their feet, canted together in abject, tipsy satisfaction. Once the picture is in her hands, she draws the runes for a fire message, and the photo fades up into flame in midair.

"For their mom," she says to Magnus. "Come on, sit with Alec. She'll want one of you, too."

For the image of Maryse's face as the messages reach her, Magnus complies. Alec sent her a letter only hours ago. All their loved ones are sprinkled across safe houses and hideaways, or waging their own battles against the demon surges that the Mother of All Demons beckons with her mere presence on the mortal plane.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow they'll go to war again.

For now, they dance and drink and chatter. Having partnered for a dance with every person in the room save for the musician himself, Magnus props his feet up on an adjacent chair. In the middle of the floor, Clary and Izzy stumble more than sway to a dreamy jazz piece that Catarina's charming the piano to play. Alec breaks from a conversation with Jace and wanders along the edge of the room toward Magnus.

He looks mussed, tired, and happy. Better than he has in weeks. Magnus feels a swell of such warm, tender desire that it should make even him blush.

"How," Magnus murmurs to Alec as he comes within murmuring range, "would you feel about absconding with me?"

"I was just gonna ask." Alec grasps his hand, stroking his knuckles with a thumb. "They look like they can wrap up this party without us."

Behind Alec, Izzy tumbles a giggling Clary into a chair, then very obviously straightens her own dress. Magnus thinks he, too, might wobble if asked to walk a straight line. He could always lean on Alec, he supposes.

"It is the part of the newlyweds to flee the fete at some point."

"That—" Alec touches the spot above his own heart, like it gives him pause. "That's gonna take a bit of getting used to."

Magnus is reaching for a blithe yet heartfelt comeback as Isabelle slips up to them. She's been a whirlwind of efficiency all evening, and still her poise looks unchinked. Her face, however, is softened by both wine and mirth.

"I got something for you two." She drops down to sit next to Alec.

"Other than all this?" Alec casts a telling glance around the room.

"Yes," she says. "Please don't tell me you were planning on going back to that shoebox of a room you have."

"Any port in a storm, no?" Magnus cuts in as Alec stalls on his reply. "With a couple of silencing charms, it's been workable."

Magnus prides himself on being a comprehensive tactical thinker, but he must confess he did not consider the night after in much detail beyond _Alec_ and _somewhere with a bed._ Even if it was their tiny nook of privacy in the old servants' quarters.

"You go there and _somebody_ will come knocking with a world-ending emergency before it's morning."

"Hate to say it, but that's probably true." Alec slumps backward.

"Here." Izzy holds up a rolled-up strip of paper between two fingers. "Not just any port. A safe haven, let's say."

Magnus peels the strip open to reveal a hand-drawn map of what looks like a section of the fort interior, rendered in pencil with such artistic care that Izzy must have delegated that to Clary. A guiding line is drawn through it in red marker, culminating in a bold X.

"You're a fucking menace," Alec says, with bottomless affection, and kisses his sister's head. "A treasure map? Really, Iz?"

"Love you, too." Standing up, she nuzzles her face into Alec's hair, then bends to kiss Magnus on the cheek. "Just be happy tonight."

"I already am." How could Magnus not be, surrounded by so much care and warmth, given without reservation? "I know it's Alec's privilege to tell you he's thankful by insulting you, but in plainer terms: you worked a miracle for us today."

Izzy laughs, a bright, full sound. "You're part of the family now. Get the hell out of here before I kick you out the door."

"Aye, aye." Magnus shares a look with Alec, the kind that's passed between them before much more perilous decisions, but that speaks the same understanding now.

They go, hand-fast, and close the door behind them.

*

"Your sister is a treasure," Magnus says, stumbling shamelessly into Alec's side, "but that was too many stairs."

"Think of this way: anybody that wants to bother us is gonna have to climb them, too."

"Mmm, that is a marvelous thought—oh."

Alec shoves open the door at the top of the staircase, at the end of their flight, and gloriously warm, wood-scented air envelops them. The room is small, but everything fits cozily in it: the cast-iron stove glowing with heat, the birchwood bed with its mismatched blankets and pillows, and the copper bathtub that nothing short of magic can have deposited up here. The water steams softly, thanks to the runes etched across the dark patina on the side of the tub.

Sighing, Alec picks up a card laid on the side table next to a bottle with a damp-wrinkled label. "'Stay hydrated.' Can I go back and kick her? A little?"

"Oh, no." Magnus extricates himself from under Alec's arm, with regret. "No, Mr. Lightwood, I finally have you alone, and you're not—hm? Is it still 'Mr. Lightwood'? You're a married man now."

Isabelle—with, no doubt, a few little helpers—has left them both wine and water, and soaps and other necessities, set on top of fresh linen towels. Magnus sends flicks of flame to the waiting candles in their sconces. The windows are hemmed in lacy ice that catches the firelight in gemlike reflections.

It's not at all what Magnus might've imagined for his entirely hypothetical wedding night. All of it looks utterly inviting.

Alec has gone quiet. His cufflinks clink against the table as he drops them there, before shucking the suit jacket.

Magnus slides the paper flower from his lapel and sets it, too, on the table. His jacket joins Alec's on the lone chair. His fingers happen upon the arrowhead, the adamas cool despite its proximity to his skin. It fits in his closed fist, a solid little heart in his palm.

"Alexander." That's always been his best endearment for Alec. It seems like the only word that will carry even a fraction of what he feels.

Alec's hands are still, fingers curled at the collar of his shirt. He tilts his head as Magnus comes close, rests the weight of it into Magnus's hands. "I—I keep waiting for this to be a dream."

"It's not," Magnus says, though he thinks he has that same feeling of walking on clouds, like reality itself were a little loose in its frame.

"Okay." Alec undoes the buttons, shaking the shirt off in a rumpled heap on the rug. "Do you want to—" His fingers skim Magnus's sides with a shyness he hasn't shown in a long time. Their breaths tremble between their faces.

"I want you to finish the question."

"Uh," Alec says, "there's the bath, and those heat runes aren't gonna last forever."

"A turn of the wrist will fix that." The froth in Magnus's tone tugs a chuckle from Alec. Everything that has lain patiently beneath the surface is rising like bubbles from the deep, glittering and fragile. They're both shaky with the same knowledge.

"I want you." Alec says it with the same simplicity that he puts in every expression of devotion that's made Magnus lose his head over the years. "I want you to explain the rune, and I want to drink wine and talk like we used to and not sleep, but—right now, just you, on my skin. So I know this is real."

His mouth twisting, unsure of his own voice, Magnus nods. Alec drags him close with a moan, stifled into a kiss, as Magnus buries his hands in Alec's hair.

There are too many buckles and buttons and laces in between Magnus and meeting Alec's wish, so he tries to order his thoughts into one more spell. It yanks their remaining clothes off in a scattershot of magic, slapping his vest against the door and Alec's pants into a window.

This time laughter bursts from Alec helpless and full-throated. "Did you at least keep 'em in the room?"

"I believe," Magnus says, mustering his tattered dignity, "you just promised me the bed. Unless you plan to have me on the rug, like some scoundrel without any sense of gallantry."

"Didn't say anything about the bed." Alec kisses his mouth again, brief and burning. "But sure, I'll fuck you on the bed, and then you should fuck me on the floor, for variety. We can steal some pillows, make it good and slow—"

"You _are_ a scoundrel." Magnus's accusation is undercut by the tenderness he can't strip from his voice. "Oh, I want you. Please."

His face against Magnus's shoulder, Alec hoists him up, off the floor. Magnus wraps his arms around Alec and feels the new scar at his scapula and the living heat of him. His now. His to keep.

So, then:

"Mine," he whispers into Alec's neck as Alec moves in him, Magnus's heels tight against his lower back, their bodies wound together.

"Magnus," Alec says, like the word's wrung from the core of him, and tips them both over the edge with a sweet, stuttering stroke. "Magnus. Love."

"You are—" Magnus tells Alec, hoarse with need and purpose, as he's splayed out under Magnus, sore and beautiful and panting "—mine, tonight and tomorrow and from there on out. I married you, Alexander, and I do not mean to let you go. Not while I live."

Alec gasps into his mouth, pulls him in and does not let go. The press of his fingers lingers on Magnus's back even as they finally part, covered in sweat, sated and punch-drunk on one another.

"Not while I live." Alec kisses him, and Magnus knows it for the oath it is.

*

Unhasping the window, Magnus lets the winter gust into the semi-sultry heat of the room. Air billows out in a gossamer banner around him. The window faces away from the city in the valley: Alicante glimmers on the far right, but the view is dominated by the mountainside and the star-sprinkled sky. The cold wells across his skin at once, though he's bundled in a towel, but the frigid night clears his thoughts.

Water sloshes as Alec raises himself from the bathtub. "What're you doing?"

"Exercising a sensible habit. Heat followed by cold. Since someone spared no effort in making my old bones ache."

" 'Someone', right, like there's a whole list of suspects," Alec grouses, linking his arms around Magnus from behind. Magnus relaxes gratefully into his hold. "Things look pretty quiet from here."

In this moment, you could believe the red pinpricks in the distance are only the nocturnal lights of the city. The wind moves from ridge to vale, bringing only the smell of clean snow from the heights.

Magnus clasps Alec's hand, tucked against his stomach. They've danced and loved and rested in each other, and if this is how he must remember Alec, he couldn't ask for more.

He might live for a handful of hours or a handful of centuries, but Alec is a constant carved into him. Magnus is here, with the weight of Alec's arrowhead at his throat and Alec's arms around him, because he wants a life with this man. _Even I can't see the future_ , he told Alec once. They have a history now, together.

He wouldn't trade away a single hour of those that have passed or those that are yet to come.

Turning a half-circle in Alec's embrace, he touches the rune on Alec's chest, neat-lined and still as if it'd always been there. Alec's eyes go soft and attentive, but there is a calm in them now, a bone-deep sense of solace.

"We should probably sleep," Magnus says, "but not quite yet?"

Alec quirks his mouth. "There's still the wine. The bath's still warm. And you owe me the story on this."

"I do indeed."

Magnus lets Alec reach past him to pull the window closed, shutting out the dark and the cold and the smoldering city.

Tomorrow will come, but not while the night lasts.

 

_end_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory book canon theft: if warlocks with fallen angel blood can light up witchlights and seraph blades, they should, in theory, also be able to use steles. I mostly went with it because I liked the idea of Magnus being able to draw that wedded union rune a bit too much.


End file.
